Yes, it does, and every MMO ever has been that way. If not we would not need 10-25 people to take down a boss.

Want a boss encounter you can solo? Wait til next expansion or go nuts in the brawlers guild.

You really need it to explicitly say that Co-Op MMORPG? Seems like more of a personal problem.

No it doesn't. All the definition says is that a large number of people participating in the game simultaneously. Farmville, from what I know (I never played it), would be counted as a MMO from the above definition.

The original poster threw that definition out as an attempt to validate his argument that if you do not like group content then MMO's are not the game for you. I'm just pointing out that the definition (taken literally) does not support what his is trying to prove. Now, if he could demonstrate that group content is necessary for 'participation' then he might be to prove his hypothesis.

Now, I do agree that MMO's have a strong group component, but that is not indicated in the definition, and I now have to wonder just because it has always been done that way doesn't necessarily make it right. There may be other models of MMO play that focus less on group content, but are still viable.

"You give us money, we give you content" -- Russ Brown, VP of Developement for Rift
Something some MMO companies seem to have forgotten.

Q: WoW revolves around raiding, that's how the game is. If you don't like it, stop playing.A: That's fine, just realize that you might be saying this to the majority of the playerbase.

Well, you can see that they're trying to play to the desires of the more casual playerbase with the features they're announcing for WoD.

Garrison seems very fleshed out and something that should keep people busy for a continuous period of time.

That and the fact that the official site announces that you can now get random bonus rewards for completing quests such as epic gear etc.

The flex-across the board also seems to cater to the acknowledgment that not many people might want to commit to raidshedules. Raidshedules are only going to be a big thing still if you're into mythic raiding it appears.

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

Everything you want is not what an MMO is about, Go play fucking final fantasy or some other game. You're describing Solo PvE content or PVP content. It's asinine what you are saying in your post. All I get from this is "we pay for WoW so we want the game to be what we have time for/are interested in" Just because I pay for something doesn't mean it should be changed to what I want. I get what I paid for. You paid for an MMORPG, stop crying and man the fuck up.

Everything you want is not what an MMO is about, Go play fucking final fantasy or some other game. You're describing Solo PvE content or PVP content. It's asinine what you are saying in your post. All I get from this is "we pay for WoW so we want the game to be what we have time for/are interested in" Just because I pay for something doesn't mean it should be changed to what I want. I get what I paid for. You paid for an MMORPG, stop crying and man the fuck up.

That's not how it works though, MMOs always have had a tendency to try and adapt to the playerbase' wishes and to offer new things. So it makes very much sense to people to come to community forums and to make their desires clear. Traditionaly MMO developers adjust and change their game based on the wishes and dislikes it hears from it's playerbase.

Misbehave, Misbehave, Misbehave. Misbehave because you are not a puppet or a robot, but a human being that can experience the world from different perspectives. "But misbehaving is the first sin! When we are children we are told so! Even in the Bible we got cast out of Eden because Eve misbehaved!"
Cogs, robots and machines aren't allowed to misbehave. Are you trying to become a machine then?

I think the answer to this debate is in other non-raiding activities dropping current Flex to Normal ilvl raid gear. Here's a list of content that in a perfect world could see progression just like raiding does:
Heroic Scenarios
Challenge Dungeons
Brawler's Guild
Daily Quests (myself I say change to weekly's like Timeless has)
I think there are people who would like to have end game content that feels rewarding the way raids do, can help progress your character the way raids do, but not necessarily be raiding. We want options is all.
BTW, do we already have this with Challenge Dungeons and Heroic Scenarios? I myself have not really dabbled in them. Also, I think Brawlers Guild is INCREDIBLY underutilized by Blizz and by casuals who want to progress in a challenging solo environment, but the complaint is it's too difficult. ( But to me that's what progression is, conquering difficult challenges)
I really hope that next xpac those of us who do not heroic raid for whatever reason can mix all of these in and any can help us progress.
TLDR: variety is the spice of life, especially for casuals and our endgame.

Q: WoW revolves around raiding, that's how the game is. If you don't like it, stop playing.A: That's fine, just realize that you might be saying this to the majority of the playerbase.

Incorrect

WoW does not revolve around raiding...or at least it used to not. in WoW vanilla that was most certainly not the case until MUCH later into its life...

The problem is that Blizz has constantly pulled to that direction, and has left people getting burnt out and sick of it.

My stance to the OP is this:

We do not want to remove challenge, we just want an alternative challenge that's NOT RAIDING. There's more to an MMORPG than just raiding, and Raiding is not the only solution in an MMORPG to acquire upgrades.

What you, Rda, want is not an MMORPG. What you want is Call of Duty with upgradable swords. That is not an MMORPG.

An MMORPG is a virtual world that encompass DIFFERENT playstyles, the Fisherman enters dangerous areas to get food for the PVEer, the PVEer gets rare craftable materials to sell to the PVPer, the PVPer protects the Fisherman from other players.... it's that kinda deal.

"Tell them only that the Lich King is dead... and that World of Warcraft... died with him..."

Originally Posted by BenBos

That's the ONLY reason you would post 9600 posts over 3 years: a mission of hate.

Well, you can see that they're trying to play to the desires of the more casual playerbase with the features they're announcing for WoD.

Garrison seems very fleshed out and something that should keep people busy for a continuous period of time.

That and the fact that the official site announces that you can now get random bonus rewards for completing quests such as epic gear etc.

Yes, I agree that they are trying. I just don't think they are trying in the right direction, so to speak. I read all there was to read about the announcements and it doesn't seem like they are improving on non-raid progressions, sadly. If anything, we are getting _less_ 5-man instances, for example, less than even in MOP. And, unless I misunderstood, when they talk about sending garrison followers on "quests", or into "instances" or "raids", they are talking about some imaginary things that don't exist in the game world, they aren't talking about real instances or raids that you can go to with your character, for example, they are talking about a minigame. If that's wrong and you can take the followers with you into real instances or raids, then I apologize, that could work.

Ah, well, maybe today's sessions will bring something.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by jmeck2725

I think the answer to this debate is in other non-raiding activities dropping current Flex to Normal ilvl raid gear. ... BTW, do we already have this with Challenge Dungeons and Heroic Scenarios?

What you, Rda, want is not an MMORPG. What you want is Call of Duty with upgradable swords. That is not an MMORPG.

An MMORPG is a virtual world that encompass DIFFERENT playstyles, the Fisherman enters dangerous areas to get food for the PVEer, the PVEer gets rare craftable materials to sell to the PVPer, the PVPer protects the Fisherman from other players.... it's that kinda deal.

I am not persuaded in the least. You say it yourself, there are different playstyles, equally valid, equally welcomed. A non-raid progression is just as valid as a raid progression. That's it.

25m and 25m Heroic is still the de-facto raiding scene. People go to 10m because they want it easy.

There are plenty of 25ms recruiting, maybe not on a particular realm - but they are around - and the players will still gravitate to those realms with them.

Guilds like Vodka/Exodus fall apart because they raid nearly as much, if not more at times, than most people work in a full time work week and you're correct -- most people don't want to do that anymore, straight up. My guild raids 3 days per week, 3 hours per night and making respectable progress after 6-8 weeks - especially when compared to any guild that raids 12-15 hours per week. I consider that extremely fucking casual for heroic 25m raiding. We just don't see the need to literally drop everything and rush through the content as fast as possible simply because it's been provided - especially at the end of the expansion where we have a minimum 6-8 months before patch 6.0.

I agree on many points, I just don't think the discrepancy is with everyone else's use of the word casual. I think it's more the misconception of the masses that every guild running 25m heroics are like Blood Legion.

It's been discussed several times. Top guilds actually raid less hours every tier than most hardcore guilds. Yes, they do raid a lot when content is fresh, but that's only 4 weeks at most every 6-8 months.

Alright, regarding garrisons and followers, based on yesterday's panels - you don't take them to real quests, instances or raids that your character goes to. When Blizzard say that you can send them to quests, instances or raids, they mean some imaginary quests, instances or raids that you won't see. Your followers will spend some time there and "do" them, whatever that means, then return with rewards.

So, yes, that's just a minigame. You'd still build your garrison and use it to try and farm either materials (like on the farm) or gear (can't do this on the farm now), of course, but that's just a side distraction like pet battles.

Meh.

In sum, we are getting less 5-man instances, we are getting a minigame, and we are getting more interesting (but faster) leveling to 100. Everything related to progression ties to raids, as usual. If you didn't like MOP and were running out of things to do there, you probably won't like WOD and will run out of things to do there too, quite quickly. What's that: two weeks at most to the level cap even if you are playing 14 hours per week, then one week getting 95% of all there is to get from heroic instances, scenarios and events, and then what - LFR and other raids again??

I used to be a hardcore raider back in TBC. We raided BT and SWP and were third or fourth to kill KJ. On our server, eu-kazzak, that was quite a big deal since we had guilds like showdown, slashcry, incorporated, absolute, etc...

As a student I had lots of time so being hardcore (raiding 5 days a week) was possible.

During the LK raid, my time started to be more valuable, yet I didn't want to be pushed out of heroic (challenging) raiding just because I didn't have enough time to invest in logistics. So we forced it anyway and managed to kill Anub heroic and LK heroic. Just 2(?) other guilds had done that and they were raiding 6 days a week. Right after killing LK the inevitable happend: People got burned out, girlfriends reached the 'over 9000' whining point (and quite frankly, you can't blame them), jobs were suffering, etc...

We sat together and knew a change was in order. We were adults, had responsibilities towards other persons and couldn't spend every evening at the pc. So we decided to raid 2 evenings a week. Cata brought quality 10 man raiding and in those 2 days we managed to kill Rag heroic in a timely fashion. This wasn't stress free, mind you. The raids per sé weren't the problem though. It was getting 10 man together. Most of our time was claimed by recruiting that 1 healer or tank that suddenly left. Again, logistics.

We want nail hard content that takes time and effort to best. But we'd got so extremely tired of the recruiting game, we'd got so extremely tired of having to cancel raids due to lack of players that we threw the towel in the ring and quit. Ragnaros heroic was our last significant achievement. All my friends, including myself froze our WoW accounts in the hopes we could one day come back and do mythically hard, tear inducing content with just us: 5 buddies who've been playing, fighting and drinking together since we were in diapers (the drinking started a wee bit later though).

My wall of text (I apologize) is an effort to explain that 'casuals' aren't bad players per definition. This breed of casual players are in fact skilled and want extremely hard content to challenge them. They just don't have the time to form a group as large as 20 and keep them together.

Would it really be bad to have easy normal 5 man dungeons and extremely hard heroic 5 man dungeons (raids)? Does the number of people that participate really have to define raiding?

Our breed of players has 0 content in WoW's current form. LFR is too easy, dungeons are too easy, flex is too easy and normal/heroic require at least 10 players.

I used to be a hardcore raider back in TBC. We raided BT and SWP and were third or fourth to kill KJ. On our server, eu-kazzak, that was quite a big deal since we had guilds like showdown, slashcry, incorporated, absolute, etc...

As a student I had lots of time so being hardcore (raiding 5 days a week) was possible.

During the LK raid, my time started to be more valuable, yet I didn't want to be pushed out of heroic (challenging) raiding just because I didn't have enough time to invest in logistics. So we forced it anyway and managed to kill Anub heroic and LK heroic. Just 2(?) other guilds had done that and they were raiding 6 days a week. Right after killing LK the inevitable happend: People got burned out, girlfriends reached the 'over 9000' whining point (and quite frankly, you can't blame them), jobs were suffering, etc...

We sat together and knew a change was in order. We were adults, had responsibilities towards other persons and couldn't spend every evening at the pc. So we decided to raid 2 evenings a week. Cata brought quality 10 man raiding and in those 2 days we managed to kill Rag heroic in a timely fashion. This wasn't stress free, mind you. The raids per sé weren't the problem though. It was getting 10 man together. Most of our time was claimed by recruiting that 1 healer or tank that suddenly left. Again, logistics.

We want nail hard content that takes time and effort to best. But we'd got so extremely tired of the recruiting game, we'd got so extremely tired of having to cancel raids due to lack of players that we threw the towel in the ring and quit. Ragnaros heroic was our last significant achievement. All my friends, including myself froze our WoW accounts in the hopes we could one day come back and do mythically hard, tear inducing content with just us: 5 buddies who've been playing, fighting and drinking together since we were in diapers (the drinking started a wee bit later though).

My wall of text (I apologize) is an effort to explain that 'casuals' aren't bad players per definition. This breed of casual players are in fact skilled and want extremely hard content to challenge them. They just don't have the time to form a group as large as 20 and keep them together.

Would it really be bad to have easy normal 5 man dungeons and extremely hard heroic 5 man dungeons (raids)? Does the number of people that participate really have to define raiding?

Our breed of players has 0 content in WoW's current form. LFR is too easy, dungeons are too easy, flex is too easy and normal/heroic require at least 10 players.

I love this and totally agree. I am fine with getting LFR quality gear for getting my nuts busted in a series of super hard 5 mans.

Well, it doesn't look like Warlords of Draenor will improve on providing a meaningful non-raid progression for all those who are tired of being shoved into raids.

The features of Warlords of Draenor so far:

* Quest from 90 to 100, do events from time to time? - OK, will do, that's welcome, although that's not an endgame.
* 6+1 instance, 4 of them available during leveling - Well... didn't we have more even in MOP??? We had 9 and now it's going be... 7?? Really?
* Some scenarios - OK, will take them. Much too short for a progression, but what else do we have apart from these and instances...
* 2 raids - Life as usual, want a non-raid progression path, that's not it.
* Challenge modes - Fine, but that's not a progression as there's no gear with stats.
* Garrisons - That's just a minigame, like pet battles. No encounters, no bosses, nothing, a minigame. There'll be some epics. Meh.
* Professions - ??? Nothing about them yet. Since there are no big news, I guess things are as usual, very little to do there.
* Immediate Level 90 for 1 Char - Only listed, because someone said "here, you got what you wanted". This is almost the opposite of what we are talking about.

So. There's nothing to be excited about right now, sadly. Maybe today's panels will bring something.

My only question is: did I misunderstood the concept of followers in garrisons in that - would we be able to take them to instances and raids (and are they powerful enough for that)? Right now I suppose we won't be able to do this, but if that's not the case, and if that allows us to try and solo (or, say, duo - with two players coming with their own followers) raids, that could work.

From what I saw, they were going to buff dungeons every patch to keep them relevant, as well as add more. So launch dungeons will still be relevant in the final patch. This would mean that the few launch dungeons we will get will be actually pretty good, so that running some of them the whole expansion (with difficulty and hopefully reward adjustments) won't be a problem. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'm expecting a few really epic dungeons plus more being added after launch.